


et à tout à l'heure au ciel

by erinaconyx



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, One-Sided Enjolras/Grantaire, death mention, far too much discussion of morality, grantaire is verbose as usual, hints of Javert/Valjean but not enough to warrant tagging, javert at the barricade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-29 01:54:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11430720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erinaconyx/pseuds/erinaconyx
Summary: In which Grantaire laments about Enjolras and a rebellion doomed to fail to Javert, and Javert may or may not have a similar situation such as the former.Grantaire, awoken from his sleep, finds a captive audience for his rambling in the form of a captured spy.Takes place in an unholy brick-adaptations combination where events happen a little differently at the barricade.





	et à tout à l'heure au ciel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tw0nkie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tw0nkie/gifts).



Grantaire does not pay much attention to the man during the first few hours. In his defence, there are a great number of people running around, levering up paving slabs and heaving tables around, and what is an extra new face in the chaos? He is largely concerned with ensuring that no overzealous revolutionaries add the crates of wine in the café cellar to the ever-growing mound of furniture and paving slabs. The road is slowly turning into an expanse of revealed bare earth as stones are removed, and the stocks of powder and bullets are well-filled, with more bullets cooling in the moulds. It is going well.

Once the barricades are raised to a satisfactory height and the square has been have successfully fenced off, there is a mood of accomplishment. Most men are sitting behind or on the piles of stone and furniture, firearms at the ready, but there is no sign of the authorities. The air is filled with lively conversations, men swapping tales of 1830, abstract rhetoric and political discourse. 

Enjolras jumps up onto the barricade. Grantaire has never seen him like this – he is regularly struck by the aura of conviction he carries with him, but in this moment, his usual righteous bearing and the sunlight-infused golden halo of hair around his face admix with the shouts of the crowd into something beyond the sum of their parts, beyond this mortal Earth, and Grantaire is transfixed. Enjolras stands above them as a conquering angel leading the army of the righteous, smiling proudly down at the crowd, and Grantaire cannot help but believe with his whole heart. 

“Citizens! Citizens. You that are here know what is true, and what is morally right and therefore ought to be true. With this knowledge, is there any choice but to create reality from that moral truth? What are we before that truth? What is our purpose if not to strive towards a world where what is right has replaced what is cruel, and wrong, and ignorant? 

"Soon we will face our foes. They come to kill us, do not mistake it, and we must match their vigour blow for blow lest we be overcome. Have no illusions: there will be terrible violence, and some amongst us shall die. When the choice is to permit the continuation of suffering of our fellow man or to die for them then our duty is clear! Let our blood be spilled in order that those who come after us shall not suffer under society but rather be lifted by it! A time will come when the human race shall be free from oppression and cruelty; there is no moral choice to be made but to bring that time about. Come, friends: embolden your hearts, and embrace your fellow man, for the dawn approaches, and soon we will see the sun rise.”

When Enjolras spoke it, it seemed inevitable. The atmosphere is almost palpable; the air sparks with impatience for this future he described, so near it is merely on the other side of the horizon. For one sweet moment, Grantaire’s mind is filled with the image of the world Enjolras described, his voice the brush and his words the paint on the newly whitewashed canvas of his mind. His mouth twists as – of course – his spirit proves deficient at maintaining this painting, and it warps and fades like a watercolour dropped in filthy water.

“What a world that would be!” 

Grantaire had not meant to speak so loudly; in honesty, he had not meant to speak at all, but now people are looking at him, so best to embrace it and continue. The suddenness and tone of his interjection had jarred with the mood. “Well, wouldn’t it! What a thing this future is to behold, and only countless corpses between here and there. I do hope our blood will not blemish the otherwise perfect face of this new world – it seems unfair to somehow be more of a nuisance after life than during it.”

Enjolras draws himself up, haughty, nostrils flaring. “If you are not here in the name of progress, then why are you here? We have many matters to attend to, and no room to coddle a drunkard with no belief or resolution to live for anything beyond the next bottle of absinthe.”

His counterarguments, his truths, are damp ash on his tongue that he cannot spit out, no matter how he grits his jaw and wills himself to speak. He is silent in the face of the crowd and the cold, imperious gaze glaring down from above. He sketches a half-formed bow, wine sloshing – damn it – from the bottle in his hand. “If you have no need of me, I will remove myself henceforth. I will be upstairs. Good luck, friends, good luck.”

\----

He is not too sure when the man gets captured. He is dozing on a table, face cushioned comfortably on his arms, in the upstairs room of the café, when Gavroche comes stomping up the stairs, crowing about a spy. 

“- at first when I told him, our fearless leader, he said it didn’t matter! He said the army have joined revolutions before so why not a police inspector! I tried to tell ‘im that this Inspector was the worst sort and there was no chance he was here to help the cause! I know these things - I know a lot of things. But Enjolras wouldn’t hear it! He told me to go and make bandages! Make bandages, like I can’t shoot a gun as well as any man! But anyway later on apparently he asked the Inspector man to his face who he was and what he was doing here, and he told him, calm as you like, that he was here to spy. Like I said! And so they tied him up downstairs. Not sure what they’re planning on doing with him right now. We’ll probably have a proper trial for him when we’ve won.” 

Grantaire reluctantly pushes himself into a sitting position. “Which- which 'Inspector' is this?”

“That man – you might not have spotted him – he was sitting downstairs for ages, not doing anything, but you’ve been up here so maybe you didn’t see him,” the boy says, swinging on the doorframe. “He’s still not doing much now, he’s just sitting there. Just - sitting there.” He cocks his head to the side, a sparrow spotting a crumb. “I wonder why. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s plotting his escape – I bet he is, he’s so quiet! You can’t trust these policemen – that’s what I told Enjolras when I spotted our spy! – but he didn’t care at first. And I was right!” He nods, satisfied. “That’s why you’ve got to listen to us smaller people. We spot things, we do. You big people look right over the obvious, but we see things. Anyway, now he’s tied up, I get his gun. Look at it! I’ve got to get back to the others – Marius has arrived!”

He clatters off down the stairs again, the spy’s rifle hitting the wall as he goes. 

Perhaps the boy will survive the night. Stranger things have happened. 

He is hardly doing anything useful up here, he decides. Besides, Enjolras, and the others, are downstairs. There is no point in spending the last few hours of his life without the company of his friends.

He snags his – he tilts it to check – disappointingly half-empty bottle of wine and descends the stairs. 

Grantaire finds the spy in the corner of the back room of the Musain. He has been left ungagged, but is well and truly bound to a small chair, with his arms disappearing behind its back and a noose slung beneath his stubborn chin. The chair, Grantaire is sure, was Jehan’s usual seat. At the other end of the room is a small gathering of friends – Combeferre, Joly, Feuilly – Enjolras – crouched over an unrolled map, loudly discussing possible defences against the inevitable. The spy is definitely in earshot – the room is not large – but does not appear, at a glance, to be eavesdropping; he is apparently examining the opposite wall, frowning faintly, either uninterested or unaware of his surroundings. 

Grantaire deposits himself firmly on the table beside the chair. The man looks him over with a brief glance, before returning to scrutinising the middle distance.

“Bonsoir, Inspector.”

There is no response. Well, he did not expect one.

“How goes the spying? Rather well, I suspect. It seems strange to me that they have tied you up here. Surely you have a vantage point here unmatched by any to be found by loitering in a doorway. Why, they are keeping you in the same room as the maps! I am sure your finely-honed senses have gathered enough information by now to bring their little rebellion to a halt within the hour.”

Other than the look when Grantaire had sat down, the man has not reacted; Grantaire briefly entertains the possibility of him being deaf – it would explain why Enjolras and company had decided to leave him in this room – but puts the notion aside when the spy suddenly replies in a low, steady voice, still looking straight ahead.

“The information I have gathered is no longer required to end this little revolt. You cannot surely believe there is any hope of victory?”

“Although I hardly live in hope, monsieur, I am ever ready to be proven wrong. If one fixes one’s expectations on the most favourable eventuality, one is bound to be disappointed; if, however, one chooses to expect the worst outcome, it works out well either way. If you are disproven – well, voilà, you can be pleasantly surprised, and if you are proven correct, then you at least have the warm satisfaction of knowing that you were right in the end. A bitter satisfaction, but a satisfaction nevertheless. I expect to taste it soon. And you, monsieur, will likely be sharing that taste, however briefly – I do not expect you will be allowed to live to see your forces victorious.”

The man’s mouth twitches sideways at the corner. “I have been led to believe that, yes.”

“Who told you that? Was it that him, the blond one? Over there, in the red? He would not say so himself, but he is undoubtedly the leader. He will likely shoot you himself. Our glorious leader has never been one to shy from his moral duty.” 

The spy interrupts with a scoff, and Grantaire laughs with him.

“Well, quite, but the notions of moral and duty differ wildly between different men, and each believes he is in the right. Not me. I know I am immoral, and I have no duty, therefore -“ he gestures to himself with the arm holding the bottle, “- I let myself be as I am, rather than attempting to mould myself otherwise. Despite this, I accept that I will likely die here with my pitifully idealistic companions, covered in my own blood and entrails just the same as they; perhaps, however, I had a more enjoyable life. In my observations of my companions, both moral and otherwise, the more virtuous a life one leads, the more one must restrict oneself from taking the opportunities for various pleasures that present themselves during the course of living. I would not be able to speak for the enjoyment to be found in a life lived in the name of duty, and I must admit it does not appear to have too many advantages; perhaps you, monsieur, might be able to put in a word for the morally upstanding?”

The man is silent for a long while, and Grantaire is leaning forwards to check his face for the glazed expression often seen on those he talks to, when the spy glances sidelong at him, piercing – the first eye contact they have yet made. “I would not expect a man such as you to be able to understand,” he says.

Grantaire hardly has to try not to take offence at that – he has received worse insults from the mouths of those he cares about much more than this stranger, after all. 

“I’m sure I can imagine! After all, I have spent the last few years in the companionship of those far more virtuous than either you or me. I will be the first to declare that I am hardly the first to stand up and endanger myself for a particular cause, however I – I am loathe to speak it out loud but I suppose there is hardly any point in being coy about it now, with Death’s breath hot on our backs – however I sometimes wish that I could find it within myself to firmly affix myself to a school of thought and to dedicate my life to it to the point that I would be willing to give that life up in the name of furthering and promoting that cause. I have to admire the spirit that it gives a man, when he believes in something beyond himself. Whether or not his cause is something that will effect any actual change is immaterial – the effect of that core belief does something to his fundamental constitution, hardens his resolve and his very self, in such a way that it cannot but inspire a similar reaction in others, even if they… lack the ability to hold such a conviction themselves. Much as a note struck at the perfect pitch will cause a room to reverberate with sound, such is the influence of some men’s souls on the rest of us – even if our souls were not formed with the creation of music in mind.”

It is impossible to tell from the man’s face whether he is deep in thought considering Grantaire’s musings, or deep in thought ignoring him. The faint frown that has not left his face since Grantaire arrived has carved itself deeper, his face frozen with his lips parted slightly. Suddenly he draws a deep breath, and turns to face Grantaire fully, his upper lip curling in a humourless smirk to reveal teeth.

“So that is your little rebellion. A demagogue and a thousand mindless echoes. You admit that this cause is pointless, and you know that it will fail. You must also know that you will die if you remain. You, unlike I, are not trapped here – you are not bound by ropes and unable to leave – take advantage of your liberty!”

Ropes, Grantaire muses, come in many shapes and sizes; their actual physicality is not proportional to their ability to tie you to something, be it a chair, a concept, or a person. He takes another swig from his bottle, swallowing down the truthful answer with the warm wine.

“There must have been moments in your life when you acted against your own best interest in the name of duty. After all, you are here, are you not? – a place where your discovery, capture, and execution was inevitable – and yet you came, regardless, either because you felt duty-bound to or because of an as-yet unrevealed wish for suicide. You have overheard plenty of our plans - if I untied you right now, would you leave?” 

The spy rolls his eyes in a manner so violent it looks almost painful and answers in the affirmative.

“Precisely my point. Perhaps, my good man, I am not as undutiful as either of us believe me to be. And, besides, wouldn’t you agree that there’s something terribly romantic about it? Dying for a hopeless cause in a failed rebellion, fraternity, wasted potential, and all that?”

“No.”

“Well, there, we must agree to differ. I do not wish to start an argument at this point in the evening. And since we will both be dying in the next couple of days, at least I will be comforted by the warm notion that my death is – is tragic and romantic, my blood spilled not in the name of a doomed revolution I scarcely supported but for the sake of camaraderie and love. That is the stuff that fuels the creation of drinkers’ songs and epic poetry. What will you have, Inspector? A life lost in the name of duty, in act of gathering information you yourself admit is unneeded – well, I have never heard the revellers sing a ballad in the name of a policeman who did his job and then died. But! Perhaps you have no need of that sort of thing. No, no, I can understand that some people do not require the validation of their peers for happiness; perhaps that is also a quality to be admired.”

Of his list of admirable qualities, he has not yet discovered one that he possesses, and this one does not break the pattern. Nor does it break the pattern of all those qualities being contained within -

He does not look at the other end of the room. 

“Well, my friend, since we are tied here together, metaphorically or otherwise, we may as well get to know each other. Are you sure you will attempt to flee if I untie you? Carrying on a conversation with a man bound to a chair is an unusual and uncomfortable experience; I have never had anyone prisoner in my life and I do not intend to start now.”

“Of course I will attempt to escape. Had we not already discussed this?”

Grantaire makes a show of thudding his head back against the wall. “Lie, man, lie! You could have been out of here with both of us keeping reasonably clear consciences! But have it your way. I am called Grantaire, the resident disbeliever of this merry band. And who might you be?”

The spy ignores the hand held out to him – not that he had any other choice, Grantaire belatedly realises, withdrawing his hand and putting the wine bottle down on the table – and raises his chin a little.

“Javert, Inspector first class, of the Paris prefecture.”

God, where did they find this one? 

“Give me a little more than that, Inspector! This could be our last night on Earth! How did you come to be here? What has your life been like? If this is the final page of your story, how did the rest of it read?”

He holds out the wine bottle to him, gesturing that he drink. Javert stares flatly back at him, ignoring the bottle waving under his nose. Perhaps Grantaire should have been a little more cautious at trying to coax information out of the man. But – he sighs, and purses his lips. 

“Why not. I was assigned to the Paris district a dozen years ago, and have achieved the rank of Inspector, first class. Before this, I was stationed north of Lille as head of the police force, until a – certain string of events led to my reassignment. As for my life, it has been a labour in the name of upholding justice.”

“Ah – and now you will die in its name as well! Fitting, fitting. I envy you, in a way, my friend. The kind of determination that enables a man to dedicate his life to such a task – it can hardly have won you any friends, and yet here you are, evidently undeterred. I may not see – since we are being frank with one another, I will tell you the truth – I may not see the point in your life’s work but I can admire a man who sticks to his convictions as you do.” The comparison suddenly strikes him and he cannot help but laugh. “In fact, in a different world, I could see you easily taking the place of our glorious leader. No, no, don’t look at me like that, you must be able to see it. And consider it! Here you are, bound by your duty to die for your cause, and here he is, bound by his duty to die for his cause, and he shall kill you, and those like you shall kill him. If that is not proof of the self-destructive nature of duty, then I do not know what is. A surfeit of duty shall soon be the deadliest disease in Paris. However, of course, this argument will not convince you; it is an unfortunate fact that those most endangered by their blind obedience to what they consider their duty are the least likely to listen to the logic of why they should turn from that duty and reconsider. Perhaps a few more men like me are needed in the world, to prevent the infection from forming an epidemic like our current situation – although I am very sure that one of me is plenty for anyone to put up with. And, of course, I shall die along with Enjolras and you, regardless of my morals, and regardless of my adherence to either side. Such is the way of the world.”

He glances at Javert, wondering if he has any observations to add – surely a police inspector would have seen much of the nature of man, it is a wonder he is not overflowing with agreement with Grantaire’s arguments – but the man appears to have entered another reverie, chin lowered to his chest. Without moving his head, he speaks:

“And without duty there would be no society for the forces of order to defend, or for those like your friends to destroy. Civilisation would not have reached the point it has without men dedicating their lives to its progress and upkeep. History is filled with countless good, moral men, who have contributed to furthering society and –“ 

He breaks himself off with a deepened frown, and is silent for a while. “Not that it matters now. I will have done my part, and after this revolution is ended, society will continue as it has, without a few of its protectors and its least useful members.”

“If that lets you rest happy in your grave, my friend.”

There is a dramatic commotion outside. 

“He’s a guardsman! Shoot him!”

“No! I know him.” That had sounded like Marius.

The men around the table abandon their map and run out of the room, leaving Grantaire staring curiously after them. 

“Grantaire!” calls Joly, sticking his head back through the doorway, “Leave that poor man alone for now - we may be in need of your strength.”

“Duty calls, Inspector,” Grantaire says, slapping the man on the shoulder, “and I must leave you. I can only hope our new friend is as entertaining a conversationalist as you.”

Leaving the bottle on the table, he leaves the room and Javert without looking back.

\----

In death, the boy’s face is slack, and oddly tranquil despite the blood. Javert wonders briefly if his death had been as – what was it – bitter and tragic and romantic as he had hoped. He looks away, shaking his head. Now was hardly the time to indulge in flights of fancy, with insurgents loose on the streets and Valjean, still, fleeing the arms of justice. He leaves the room and trots down the stairs, cane tucked under his elbow.

He had, after reporting back to the Préfecture, been given a new assignment: to guard a certain stretch of the bank of the Seine and watch for criminals attempting to flee by more unusual routes; having satisfied himself that Valjean is not at this barricade, either alive or dead, he has no reason to linger. The hackney carriage is where he had asked it to wait, and he instructs the driver to take him to the Pont de Jena.

Paris is empty but for the patrols of the National Guard, and Javert lets his gaze slip over the houses and shops as the carriage clatters over the cobblestones. 

For all his monologuing, Grantaire had been in error. He had died, yes, but Javert had lived: proof of Javert’s own reasoning. To be morally compelled to follow a cause is only justifiable if it is for the right cause; there is only one morally right cause, universally, and therefore he upholds it. Chaos contains within itself the seeds of its own inevitable downfall, whether that chaos be the organised destruction of a rebellion or the tangled soul of a drunken cynic; the actions of those chaotic individuals who act against society do not need to be understood, and he tells himself this firmly. 

Tomorrow he will go to the Rue de l’Homme Armé, and finally bring an end to a story that had dragged on far beyond its time. Valjean will be arrested, the historic perversion of justice will be ended, and Javert will be able to put the man out of his mind at long last.

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies to any Amis fans whose characters and plot I butchered and omitted in the name of more space for R rambling. papyrusgoodbyerus, I hope you enjoyed this, even if it wasn't...particularly on-prompt.
> 
> Title sung by Javert in the original concept album, and translates as _and right on time, to heaven_.


End file.
